Digital video capabilities can be incorporated into a wide range of devices, including digital televisions, digital direct broadcast systems, wireless broadcast systems, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop or desktop computers, digital cameras, digital recording devices, digital media players, video gaming devices, video game consoles, cellular or satellite radio telephones, and video teleconferencing devices. Digital video devices may implement video compression techniques, such as those described in the standards defined by MPEG-2, MPEG-4, ITU-T H.263 or ITU-T H.264/MPEG-4, Part 10, Advanced Video Coding (AVC), and extensions of such standards, to transmit and receive digital video information more efficiently.
Video compression techniques may perform spatial prediction and/or temporal prediction to reduce or remove redundancy inherent in video sequences. For block-based video coding, a video frame or slice may be partitioned into macroblocks. Each macroblock can be further partitioned. Macroblocks in an intra-coded (I) frame or slice are encoded using spatial prediction with respect to neighboring macroblocks. Macroblocks in an inter-coded (P or B) frame or slice may use spatial prediction with respect to neighboring macroblocks in the same frame or slice or temporal prediction with respect to other reference frames. After video data has been encoded, the video data may be packetized for transmission or storage. The video data may be assembled into a video file conforming to any of a variety of standards, such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) base media file format and extensions thereof, such as AVC.
Some devices may be configured to utilize Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (or DASH) technology that segments media files, such as digital movies. Such devices may receive DASH segments from typical HTTP servers over the Internet, enabling the devices to access streaming media content in various bitrates, qualities, and network conditions. However, such devices may be limited in their ability to retrieve streaming media due to their native networking configurations. In particular, many devices used for consuming media, such as home set-top boxes, laptops, and other computing devices, may not include transceivers, radios, or other technologies capable of receiving broadcast content. For example, a family laptop may utilize a non-broadcast communication link (e.g., a unicast connection via WiFi/local area network) to a wireless router to receive media content from various data sources over the Internet. Thus, such media consuming devices may not be capable of retrieving files delivered over broadcast/multi-cast networks, limiting the possible access points and content that may be enjoyed by their users.